Student Reception/Nursery Teaching Assistant Review

I really enjoyed my placement and felt I was given a lot of opportunities to complete my work and gain appropriate experience. The staff were kind and supportive and I was able to enhance my knowledge and experience on a daily basis. I was even able to gain one to one experience through the trusting relationships I built and was able to thrive within my role because of this.

I often felt like I was valued as more than a student on a placement especially by the teaching assistants who had more time to spare. I was given a lot of responsibility with a child on a one to one basis which I really appreciated as I felt trusted and was able to gain a lot of knowledge and experience in this area.

Whilst I didn't get to spend much time with the class teacher or head teacher due to their workload I did receive a lot of support and guidance from the teaching assistants in the class and I felt that they truly did care about my experience and training during my time there.

I was pretty busy every day but this was to be expected in an early years classroom setting. As I was trusted to provide activities for a child with SEN I was often busy with looking after her and making sure that the plans for my activities suited her. I did not feel over worked though and enjoyed all of the activities I did.

I felt like I was given a good amount of responsibility as I was trusted to carry out activities and lessons with small groups of children both which I had planned and as for a phonics group when their teacher was absent. I was also given the responsibility of working one to one with a child with SEN sometimes as previously mentioned.

I truly believe that this placement has given me valuable experience for my future and the experiences I had have led me to come think about working in SEN as this is something that I really enjoyed and found to be really rewarding. This is not something that I had considered before my placement so this was definitely a valuable experience for me.

I felt like the children and staff were treated well and were well cared for. There was little complaint if any and the majority of children and staff seemed to be happy and enjoying themselves on a daily basis. I could see that the workload causes stress from time to time but this was to be expected in such an environment.

I knew what I was supposed to be doing most of the time which made me think that my placement was well set up and ready for me. As for the running of the class it seemed to to quite smoothly most days with regular lesson times and play times to suit the attention and ability levels of the young children.

As I was on a placement I would say that this question is not relevant as it was the responsibility of my university to provide me with training however the placement has staff who were happy to help and answer my questions and made time where they could to talk to me about my activities and any concerns I may have had.

I would love to work at this school however due to the location this would unfortunately be impossible. As a placement we had to get taxis there and back (paid for by the university) and as I do not drive it would not be possible for me to get there on a daily basis even if I were to stay in my universities town.

This is not really related to the placement as it was not a block placement. We only attended two days a week. There were two other students from my course there at the same time as me and another student from our university was there on some of our days too but I was at my placement to learn and gain experience not to socialize.

This is not applicable as I did not live there.

This is a again not applicable as I did not live there.

Due to the location it would have unfortunately been impossible to attend events outside of our placement hours as we would not have been able to access the transportation needed to get there.